


Solar Flares and Tree-People

by Opalgirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-06
Updated: 2010-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 08:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalgirl/pseuds/Opalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alanna the Lioness and her family are surprised by a mysterious blue box and an even stranger man within.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solar Flares and Tree-People

As Thom and the twins played on the shore, close to the water’s edge, chasing each other and playing with the hound Alanna had brought home for them, George swore he saw the air ripple and shimmer as he watched.

 

It was one of the few days that they were both at home, and neither one of them had work that demanded their attention. Instead, George had persuaded his wife to sit with him, close to the water, and watch the children. Of course it would not go smoothly.

 

Alanna tensed next to him and then she stood up, bracing herself. “Something’s not right,” she muttered. “I don’t know what, but— _Great Merciful Mother!_ ”

 

Looking up to see what had caused her exclamation, George swore, startled. The air shimmered again and something was making a terrible roaring sound. A rectangular shape landed on the sand, almost in front of Alan’s nose, with an alarming bang.

 

The shape was revealed to be some sort of a structure; like a box stood upright, but it glowed faintly. A door swung open, with a whoosh of air and a series of short, high-pitched sounds. Alan yelped and shoved himself backwards, away from whatever it was.

 

“All right?” The new voice belonged a man, dressed all in black, who emerged from the box and stooped low to meet Alan’s eyes.

 

Aly stood nearby, tousled, her eyes wide and staring, and with one arm locked around Thom, who looked equally as stunned.

 

Alanna, startled more than angry, stalked over to the box, a threatening figure despite her stature. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What is this? Get away from my son.”

 

The man straightened up. “Ah, and you’d be mum, then. Why, he even looks like you. Hullo.”

 

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like surprises. Answer my question.”

 

“Lass,” George warned as he came to stand next to her. “You can’t hurt him just for bein’ here.”

 

“Trespass on my land and I can,” she growled. “Are you going to answer?”

 

“I’m the Doctor. And you are?”

 

“I’m Sir Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau, the King’s Champion of Tortall.”

 

The man looked taken aback. “You don’t look like a ‘sir’,” he mused, apparently to himself.

 

Alanna glowered at him. “I came by that title honestly. This is my husband, Baron George of Pirate’s Swoop, and these are our lands. How did you come to be here?”

 

“Dodging an unexpected solar flare… who’s your king, now?”

 

Alanna told him, scowling and still standing in her fighting posture.

 

“Ah, yes. I haven’t been to this particular planet in a while. I mean no harm.”

 

“The Doctor?” asked Thom, eyes bright with curiosity. “Is that all you are? I mean… don’t you have any other name?”

 

“Sorry, laddie, didn’t see you there,” the man replied, turning to the boy. “No, I don’t. I’m the Doctor. Just the Doctor. And now that your mum looks less likely to murder me—I am truly sorry, Sir Alanna, didn’t mean to startle anyone, truthfully—excuse me.” He stepped halfway into his box and bellowed, “ _Rose!_ For the love of all the planets in this galaxy, I think you’d sleep through World War Five! Wake up!”

 

A moment later, a tousled and bleary-eyed young woman appeared, wearing a nightgown that ended at her knees. “S’matter?” she asked sleepily, running her fingers through her blonde hair. “Where are we?”

 

“In the realm of Tortall, on a planet that’s very parallel to your earth. You managed to sleep through the TARDIS dodging a solar flare. I haven't the slightest idea how you did.”

 

“Easy,” she replied, yawning. “I’d do it again—oh, God, I’m not dressed!” She fled and the Doctor shook his head.

 

“I forgot how much sleep humans need,” he remarked, “especially young humans.” He knelt down to tousle a still-stunned Alan’s hair. “Sorry, lad. I gave you a fright, didn't I? I s'pose it would, that. You all right?”

 

Alan nodded, and Alanna bent to scoop him up.

 

“The little ones have names, yeah?”

 

“The buddin’ scholar over there is Thom, Alanna’s got Alan, and the lass is Alan’s twin—“

 

“—Aly,” the girl in question supplied, bobbing her best curtsy for the Doctor. “And I’m not just Alan’s twin. I’m Aly, too.”

 

“Oh, _of course_. You couldn’t just be his twin, could you now? You wouldn’t be yourself.” The Doctor grinned broadly. “When she gets dressed, I think you’ll like my friend Rose, Miss Aly.”

 

Alanna frowned, the fire of her Gift flickering at her fingertips. “’How much sleep humans need’,” she repeated. “Is that to say you’re not human?”

 

“No. Not exactly. And I wouldn’t recommend that—she doesn’t much like things of that sort, my ship.” He patted the worn blue surface of his box. “Would you like to see it?”

 

“Ship?” Thom repeated, bewildered. “Would it float?”

 

“Of course, lad, of course. Right then—are you up for a tour, dearest?” he said, seemingly asking the box. Something chirped, as if in reply.

 

“Come along, then, if you’re interested. Rose, we’ve company!”

 

                                                ***

 

“Where're you from?” George overheard Aly ask the Doctor's young friend.

 

“London, o' course,” the older girl answered, her voice carrying down from the curtain wall.

 

He could imagine the puzzled frown on Aly's face and could hear it in her words. “London? Where's that?”

 

The words of the two girls faded away as he entered the keep, and were replaced by the echoes of his footsteps.

 

He found the rest of his family—Alanna and the boys—and the Doctor in the study. Thom sat at the strange man's feet, enthralled with what the newcomer had to say, and Alan sat on the sofa, a further distance away, but still listening.

 

“I've tried to reach Jon using the fire,” Alanna said, looking up from the desk. “Nothing.  I told him--” a jerk of her thumb indicated the Doctor--”that I have to tell the King. He seemed fine with it.”

 

“...amazing man, he was,” the Doctor was telling Thom, “absolutely brilliant. Not much by way of sense, him, but he was.”

 

Thom nodded, his face serious. “And he died?”

 

“Died, he did. But, laddie, all humans die. Even the ones who aren't human die, eventually. Well, not me, so far, but most do.”

 

Alan looked horrified and Thom startled. “What's that supposed to mean?”

 

“Oh, nothin'. Just old like your granddad, me.” The engaging man grinned. “In the future--years and years and years in the future, all right?--there's more in the world than just humans.”

 

“We have merpeople, and dragons, and unicorns--”

 

“And centaurs,” Alan added. “Winged horses.”

 

“And great bloody spiders with human heads, if I'm right—and I am right. Genius, me. No, never mind that. Once, when I was hopping about, I met people—tree-people, you'd say.”

 

The boys gaped and George found himself listening. Even Alanna had put down her pen—she loved a good story, after all.

 

“Look like your trees, they do—they've bark—but they can walk and talk. Rather clever lot. Me, I like them.”

 

Alanna frowned. “I was told tales about walking trees when I was a child. I assumed they were the stories of drunk soldiers.”

 

The Doctor turned away from the children and faced her. “Your planet wasn't hospitable to them, yeah? So they left. Haven't been any of them here for centuries, not since that great ugly city you lot have. There's too much goin' on in this world for them—you've got magic goin' all over the place an' it causes all sorts of things that you humans don't even notice, at first. Other species, other races—they feel it, and it makes 'em uncomfortable.”

 

Alan frowned and it was Thom who asked the question: “Does the magic bother you, Doctor?”

 

“Nah, not me. Got to be used to all sorts of things.”

 

The Doctor's face darkened briefly, and George wondered just what this traveler had seen. His thoughts were interrupted by the door banging open and a breathless Aly rushing into the room, the Doctor's companion on her heels.

 

“Doctor.” The young woman introduced to them as Rose tugged at the Doctor's leather sleeve, anxiously.

 

“If it's Rickey the Idiot or another of his lot, I've gone on holiday. 'm tired of rescuin' your boyfriends, Rose.”

 

Rose scowled. “It has nothing to do with Mickey,” she said, emphasizing the name carefully. “Phone in the TARDIS—it's... well, they _say_ they're the Canadian Prime Minister.”

 

“Which one?”

 

“And how 'm I supposed to know?” Rose demanded. “When th' man says he's Prime Minster, you don't ask for his name!”

 

The Doctor sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “When it's a time machine, you do. Canadian, you say?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“Never bother me. Independent lot, them. If it's the one I'm thinkin' of, you wanna be tellin' him to keep to himself, Rose. Go on to the TARDIS—I'll be along.”

 

Rose scowled, said her farewells, and left, with Aly to escort her.

 

“Baron. Sir Alanna.” The Doctor turned to them. “Lads,” he added, glancing at the boys. “Looks like I'll be off.”

 

“Duty calls?” Alanna asked, mouth quirked upwards in a tiny smile.

 

“Yup. Next time, I'll come 'round and meet your King; his Queen is renowned as a gorgeous woman for at least two hundred years after her death.” The Doctor whistled. “Her, I'd like to meet. Might make my girl— _girls_ —jealous, her.”

 

When the box had disappeared from view, without a trace of it or its occupants ever having been there, George turned to his wife, who looked very thoughtful.

 

“Shouldn't have let him in,” Alanna muttered. “Why should we have trusted him?”

 

George shrugged. “I tried to glimpse him using the Sight—nothin'. He's not Gifted, so he wasn't using magic to shield himself from me. Aly's Sight, though, hers is stronger than mine ever thought of being. She would have let us know if she Saw something wrong.”

 

Alanna's frown deepened and she picked up her pen once again, to continue writing a missive to the King as Aly skipped into the study.

 

“ _Da_ ,” she said, tugging at his arm. “Rose said, in her time, there's carts and carriages that move without horses and lights that don't need fire, and,” Aly's eyes were huge, as she continued, “and stairs that move themselves.”

 

“It sounds amazing, doesn't it?” He smiled at his eager child. “The Doctor was tellin' your brothers about tree-folk, before he went away.”

 

                                                                        ***

 

Two years passed, and George thought the children had almost forgotten about the Doctor and his box, in the way children do.  Perhaps they thought they had imagined it; sometimes he thought he had, and Alanna never mentioned it.

 

They were spending Midwinter in the city, not at the Swoop, and were outside, in the company of the Queen and the royal children, when he heard a half-familiar roar.

 

The worn blue box materialized in front of them, on the stones of the courtyard, and the door swung open with the same whoosh of air and steam. George laughed, Alanna shook her head, and Thayet stared.

 

Thom and the twins rushed forward to greet the Doctor. Their companions, the princes and princesses, on the other hand, held back, keeping close to their startled mother.

 

“Hello, beautiful!” The Doctor called, stepping out of the box with a wide grin on his face.

 

“He looks like you when he does that,” Alanna muttered.

 

“He does not.” The Doctor interjected, startling Alanna. “Your husband don't look nothin' like me, Sir Alanna. Superior hearing, me.”

 

“If you're such a superior thing, why couldn't you land us someplace warm?” whined Rose, who hadn't aged at all, as she stepped out.

 

“Warm? Humans,” the Doctor scoffed. “Not cold.”

 

Rose pouted as she leaned against the side of the box—and George, if pressed, would have to admit that she pouted quite prettily. “It is.”

 

“Don't go makin' that face at me, Rose Tyler. Here.” The Doctor shed his leather jacket and draped it around Rose.

 

Thayet's frown had only deepened and her younger children were trying to hide behind her and maintain a view of what was going on. “Would someone care to explain?” she asked mildly. “Is this something that requires my lord's attention?”

 

The Doctor snapped to attention and smiled. “Ah. _You're_ Thayet the Peerless. The portraits do _not_ do you justice, Your Majesty.”

 

Rose snickered. “I think someone's smitten.”

 

George grinned at her—Thayet had that effect on people—and Alanna elbowed him.

 

The Doctor ignored them and bowed to the queen. “I'm the Doctor, Your Majesty.”

 

“I am Thayet of Conte, Queen of Tortall. Doctor, is it? Stranger things have happened. Ever since my lord heard of your visit to the Baron and Sir Alanna, he has wanted to meet you.”

 

“O' course.”

 

“We thought you weren't coming back,” Thom interrupted. “It's been forever.”

 

The Doctor glanced at an odd device on his wrist. “Not forever, lad. About two years, in your time. Your Majesty, my companion, Rose Tyler.”

 

The girl fumbled an awkward bow and straightened up. “Hello,” she finished.

 

“Hello, Rose.” Thayet smiled. “Shall we perhaps take the gathering indoors?”

 

“Yes, yes, of course. Come along, Rose—an' mind your manners. With royalty, us!”


End file.
